Changes at Baylor

The 171-year-old university fired its football coach and demoted its famous president today. Will that be enough?

On May 26, 2016, Baylor University's board of regents says it will fire head football coach Art Briles and re-assign university President Kenneth Starr in response to questions about its handling of sexual assault complaints against players. Charlie Riedel/AP

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For the majority of Baylor’s seventeen-decade-long existence, the Baptist university built along the Brazos River in Waco mostly kept to itself. The private institution, a bulwark of Christian ideals and philosophies, inspired the kind of fierce devotion often enjoyed by small colleges and universities, but few people outside of those who spent their formative years at the university, paid attention to the school. And Baylor rarely captured the nation’s interest (though it did famously generate headlines when it finally lifted its ban on dancing, in 1996).

Yet during the past decade or so, Baylor’s national prominence has shifted radically. It has scaled up its ambition—to become a top-tier university, to have a nationally ranked football program, to build state-of-the-art facilities on its once-sleepy campus. In short, Baylor has grown at an unprecedented rate.

With that explosive growth has come some great pains. Today, after a sexual assault scandal that has been unfurling in the public eye since August 2015, when a former football player, Samuel Ukwuachu, was convicted of raping a fellow BU student, Baylor fired head football coach Art Briles and demoted Ken Starr, the university president and chancellor, who became a household name after his investigation precipitated the impeachment of U.S. president Bill Clinton.

For months, Baylor has been under increased scrutiny as questions have swirled about what school administrators knew about sexual assault allegations involving its students. An independent firm was investigating the school, and people watching the news were waiting for its findings.

All of that came to a head this week, when a late-night report from Chip Brown, a University of Texas writer for HornsDigest.com, a sports news site dedicated to UT, indicated that Baylor’s board of regents had voted to fire Starr as president of Baylor. Brown broke the news with reports from unnamed sources early on Tuesday, May 24, and for hours the report stood unrefuted. Local and national media called Baylor offices and administrators to ask if Starr was still president, getting answers ranging from “as far as I know” to “I can’t answer that question” until, finally, the school communicated via a press release that it “will not respond to rumors, speculation, or reports based on unnamed sources.”

It was a testy and somewhat confrontational response, but Baylor’s statement briefly put a lid on the simmering pot that had national outlets like the Washington Post and ESPN reporting the item about Starr—which turned out to be wrong. Yet things seemed to boil over in the next 48 hours, and by Thursday morning, reports out of Waco were saying that not only would Starr be ousted from his position as president, but that Briles, the exalted head coach who had transformed Baylor’s football program from an afterthought to a national power, would also be fired.

It wasn’t the way things were supposed to happen. After Ukwuachu was convicted last year, Starr sent out a press release that, while lamenting the woman’s suffering, declared that “By God’s grace, we are living in a golden era at Baylor University.” He wasn’t wrong about that, at least if you look at the things the school had achieved since 2002, the year that the school’s administration unveiled its “Baylor 2012” vision for the university’s future.

That ten-year plan was intended to bring Baylor “into the top tier of American universities, while reaffirming and deepening its distinctive Christian mission.” The school scaled up its focus on research, big-name faculty, and sports. It tripled its tuition between 2002 and 2016. It took on unprecedented debt—building a $266 million football stadium, a $103 million sciences building—in pursuit of its ambition to enter that top tier of schools, to become the Baptist Notre Dame.

Putting up state-of-the-art buildings gives people plenty to look at, but those buildings also cast shadows. The story of Baylor’s growth and success often eclipsed increasing reports of sexual assault that went well beyond Ukwuachu. Tevin Elliott, a defensive end who joined the Baylor Bears in August 2009, was convicted of sexual assault in 2014. Face-of-the-franchise player Shawn Oakman, who joined the team in August 2012, was arrested earlier this year on charges of sexual assault; according to a subsequent report, Oakman had been accused of assault back in 2013. Reports surfaced that allegations against Tre’von Armstead and Shamychael Chatman, two other football players, weren’t investigated by Baylor for two years. But sexual assault allegations weren’t only levied against football players—stories continued to spill out involving students involved in the fraternity system, the tennis team, engineering, architecture, and more.

Through it all, Baylor’s response was institutional silence. Starr spoke only through press releases issued at curious times—just before kickoff on Super Bowl Sunday, in the midst of Baylor’s annual “Late Night” festivities—and Briles and athletics director Ian McCaw addressed only friendly media, responding to questions about the sexual assault problem at Baylor with context-free claims like “we constantly address [sexual violence]” and “we have a zero-tolerance policy [for the issue].”

At the moment, McCaw still has a job. According to yet another press release issued by Baylor, he faces “probation” and “sanctions,” while Briles is “suspended” pending his final termination. Starr, meanwhile, has been relieved of his duties as president, remaining on as chancellor and taking on an unspecified role at Baylor’s law school.

In a statement released today, Starr wrote:

It must be known, however, that I was not privy to any of the allegations regarding interpersonal violence until the Fall of 2015, at which time I immediately launched an internal investigation before recommending to the Board an independent external investigation, which the Board then commissioned with Pepper Hamilton.

The external investigation to which Starr refers came about following the media firestorm that was kicked off upon Ukwuachu’s conviction. Baylor retained the services of Pepper Hamilton, a law firm out of Pennsylvania that specializes in offering consulting and recommendations to colleges and universities facing issues around sexual assault on campus. Pepper Hamilton’s reputation hasn’t always been sterling—it has come under fire in the past for an approach that’s left survivors of those assaults feeling less-than-acknowledged—but in the case of Baylor, based on the findings of fact released today, the firm appears to have done a very thorough job of confirming things that we’d learned of through our own reporting on the matter.

Based on information released today, the report also explains why Briles lost his job, even as the entire university has problems around sexual assault. According to the findings of fact:

In addition to broader University failings, Pepper found specific failings within both the football program and Athletics Department leadership, including a failure to identify and respond to a pattern of sexual violence by a football player, to take action in response to reports of a sexual assault by multiple football players, and to take action in response to a report of dating violence.

The failure to identify and respond to patterns in the football program has long been troubling—it’s at the heart of a lawsuit against the university by one of the victims of Tevin Elliott—and Pepper Hamilton’s report is consistent with what multiple sources told Texas Monthly in the winter of 2015 and spring of 2016 about Baylor, Briles, and the football program. More broadly, the report noted that there are “significant concerns about the tone and culture within Baylor’s football program as it relates to accountability for all forms of athlete misconduct” and that Briles’s leadership “created a cultural perception that football was above the rules,” because “in certain instances, including reports of a sexual assault by multiple football players, athletics and football personnel affirmatively chose not to report sexual violence and dating violence to an appropriate administrator outside of athletics. In those instances, football coaches or staff met directly with a complainant and/or a parent of a complainant and did not report the misconduct.”

Findings from the report are also consistent with information we’ve learned that questions the way other administrators and Baylor staff have handled assault allegations. According to Pepper Hamilton, “administrators engaged in conduct that could be perceived as victim-blaming” and “perceived judgmental responses by administrators based on a complainant’s alcohol or other drug use or prior consensual sexual activity also discouraged reporting or continued participation in the process” were among the failures. But if someone is being held accountable for the behavior being outlined here, we don’t know who it is.

Pepper Hamilton also notes that the Baylor University Police Department “contributed to, and in some instances, accommodated or created a hostile environment,” but the measures taken to put an end to that are currently a mystery.

When Baylor’s board of regents held a conference call for media, officials refused to answer our specific questions about changes at the Baylor Police Department, instead hewing to their established talking points.

These are difficult concerns to address, and in Baylor’s 171 years, it largely didn’t have to answer questions like these. But as the university has grown in the past 10 years, it is now finding that with increased power and visibility come increased vulnerability and scrutiny, and Baylor, at this point, has to decide whether it’s a small, sleepy school on the banks of the Brazos or if it still intends to be large, influential force of higher education in America. If it’s the latter, then it desperately needs to learn best to respond to issues like the ones it continues to face.

It really does stink. And Sperber’s description is pretty accurate. About the only answer is for the NFL to start a farm system, like MLB and NHL, and offer kids coming out of high school a place to develop. Of course that isn’t going to happen, because the NFL already has a farm system in place through the NCAA and it doesn’t cost them anything. It’s quite the mess.

Comrade Suge

The fact the coaching staff (minus Briles) remains indicates this is way, way from far enough.

Maggie E

The NCAA should ban all of Baylor athletics for 5 years.

Super Keith

I’m no fan of Baylor, but I think that would be wholly unfair to all of the kids that are doing things the right way (which is the vast majority), as well as the students that benefit from athletics. You don’t cut off the nose to spite the face. Baylor needs to clean house (anywhere there is an issue). The NCAA will most certainly place Baylor on sanctions of some sort, but to kill athletics isn’t fair to the 99% that did nothing wrong.

безопасность

The notion that “students” can “benefit from athletics” is wholly spurious. The metaphor you’re looking for isn’t the nose and face, it’s killing the cancer to spare the patient. You’re right that Baylor needs to clean house, but you ignore the fact that the issue resides in athletics.

Maggie E

Thank you TM. Keep pushing for answers about any changes at Baylor Police.

Super Keith

It will certainly be interesting to see how Baylor proceeds with the football staff. I’m assuming that Bennett is a very short term stop-gap measure, just to have someone overseeing the daily operations. And that Baylor will move quickly to find a new coach, who will in turn bring in a new staff. That may be too much to assume, but if they oust Briles, only to leave the rest of the department in place, would mean that not much has really changed. The report made it clear that the environment in the football program was fairly toxic, and Baylor isn’t going to clean that up by dismissing one person…even if that one person is the head coach.

Bette

It seems lots of young people come to school with stinking values and little respect for women; than again some women have their eyes on the prize of an athlete and have no respect for themselves. Women need to make it clear to men they meet that they are not young women who are interested in hook ups. If she makes it clear that she is actually looking for a life mate at the outset, the riff raff will move on to easy prey. Imagine that kind of honesty? Better to tell the truth and have 99% of the young men flee.

Jason

bette, that’s some top-notch victim-blaming! You seem nice…

dormand

Absolutely nothing happened following this egregious series of acts against the females who
had the misfortune to find themselves in the proximity of select members of the Baylor University
football team who had been kicked off other schools teams and welcomed with open arms by
Briles,

Nothing happened until The Dallas Morning News writer Kevin Sherrington said “No Mas! ”
and penned his exquisite three part series of well documented pieces on the details
of these transgressions by the Baylor coach and the Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Speak No Evil by the enablers who head the Administration at Baylor University.

Sick Cultures result in Sick Results.

Kevin Sherrington gets mu nomination for the the Pulitzer Prize!!!

Ben Johnson

You should change your name to dormant because that describes your intelligence.

Groucho55

“But as the university has grown in the past 10 years, it is now finding that with increased power and visibility come increased vulnerability and scrutiny, and Baylor, at this point, has to decide whether it’s a small, sleepy school on the banks of the Brazos or if it still intends to be large, influential force of higher education in America. If it’s the latter, then it desperately needs to learn best to respond to issues like the ones it continues to face.”
Are you kidding me! Small, sleepy or otherwise, this school had better respond better than it has or else parents of children considering whether to send their child to this school might want to rethink whether this school would handle incidents like these cited in the article the same or radically different. It finally got the attention of the “press”, as well as those getting ready to send their kids off to this “institution of higher learning”!

John Wilson

Stanford has GD 26 cases vs Baylor’s 4, period to period, and yes, Baylor screwed up, they didn’t manage the hypocritical/biased animals in the media. I hope Briles puts the school that can’t run a school, including PR, out of it’s misery.

Ben Johnson

That is a big article considering how little factual data supports it.

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